Editorial Peer Review: Its Strengths and Weaknesses (Asis&T Monograph Series)

Rating:
Summary: An ambitious work
Review: An ambitious work. The author claims her work covers "English language studies published between 1945 and 1997". Here, "studies" is the keyword: only that which has been scientifically pure, here meaning analyzable, will be included. The book is written to explain the situation to the establishment; it is not radical. Notably, all bibliographical references -- an impressive and rich number -- are split apart, being placed at the end of each chapter, making it difficult to quickly see just who the author is leaning upon, and who was excluded.

This book is an example of a pattern that is already becoming apparent in my, as of yet, short study of the topic. The theme in question, presented to the willing reader by many of these inquiring authors, is whether all this questioning of and trouble with peer review is merely sour grapes, put forward by those who don't have the wherewithal to get published, or who have lost that quality. A type of dry scientific analysis is put forward as the solution that will answer this question. In this case, an expert -- obviously absolutely anyone who reads every study ever published on the matter since 1945 can be called one -- takes a stand, and gives us the authoritative answer: the best of all possible worlds. How appropriate. No expert reviewers, definitely not public ones, have decided what should be published here as truth, as in the manner of a scientific journal. Yet the tone of the book is final and certain; very heavy on what typically goes as hard science, it is hard science without the inconvenient peer reviews. So if this book does question that system, it fits readily into the one it is critiquing: nonpublic editorial and peer review. My point: the field of 'meta peer review' is a new field, and, as in any new field: there is no truth without the experts -- plural -- to make it. Despite the desire of some to claim it as their own.

Here is a taste of the mentality behind this book, its method and its desired solution. In this quote, what many people call interpretation is quite strangely renamed "meta-analysis", an attempt by the author to short-circuit and thereby escape the requirement that her statements, findings and interpretations of data also be put before a community of experts, to be judged, and her attempt to discredit any information on the matter she does not deem "strict" enough to be "sufficient", i.e. acceptable or valid. It is also telling that she calls this "meta-analysis" the "third step", what is normally, in science, the peer review process; one here taken up by the author alone, though one would assume we all perform self-review by default. The point of the quote is to discredit all previous work by naming it convoluted and chaotic to the scientific mind, not to mention the author's. Point taken. We feel her pain. Though it begs the question of why previous "studies" should have had the foresight and consideration to have been written and organized "neatly" for the current purpose of our scientist at hand. And indeed, they appropriately were not.

Quote: "When data are sufficient, a group of studies can be statistically analyzed with the goal of drawing conclusions about the accumulated data; this third step is usually called a "meta-analysis." In the field of editorial peer review, groups of studies on the same topic did not fit neatly together, others did not ask the same question or had a slightly dissimilar design, and could not be analyzed using this strict methodology. When appropriate, similar data from a group of studies have been averaged, but not statistically analyzed using meta-analysis."

As for the title of the book, Editorial Peer Review, and the usage of this term throughout the book, including the quote above, a term used rarely in the literature on the topic accept to refer to this opus: ask yourself, "What is editorial peer review?". Is not imagining and then adopting this expansive term already reaching a conclusion about what should be considered the proper method of peer review, past, present and future? Is not labelling this field of study such implying that we should retain the current method of having an anonymous "editor" involved in selecting what we are permitted to readily see and read, what should be widely published? Is not the term limiting the possibility of having a future peer review process that is public and nonanonymous? In that case, what would "editorial" mean: the public reviewers? That would be a nonsensical use of the term 'editorial peer review', since the editor will have disappeared. What is so insufficient about just plain vanilla 'peer review' or 'the study of peer review'? Is not 'editorial peer review' a bit redundant and convoluting as opposed to enlightening? What is the difference between an editor disgarding a paper and a reviewer invalidating it? Why are there two terms still being used and what are their independent roles? What type of power structure do these separate terms denote? Don't be mistaken in thinking an editor is the same as what is called in the publishing field a copy-editor: copy-editors fix the language, spelling and grammer. Editors make the decision to include or exclude. That is a difference that should not be forgotten. In our current peer review system, the book's term makes some limited sense: it reveals the two-stage process of judgement any submitted paper must go through: editor and reviewers, both anonymous. The checks and balances either do not exist, as in the case of exclusive editorial decisions, or are kept from the public eye, as in anonymous review. This is the organizational thought and structure this book is written to address, support and maintain.That is it's core motivation and all it's scientific workings should be taken as such.

Rating:
Summary: Chapters examine the impact of editorial boards
Review: What are the strengths and weaknesses of an editorial peer review process in the scholarly world? Ann Weller's Editorial Peer Review reviews published studies of the process, from rejection rates and studies of editors, authors and reviewers to how editorial peer reviews work. Chapters examine the impact of editorial boards, authorship problems, and other issues central to the peer review process. College level material.